My Favorite Red Sox Players 15-11

 

15. Bill Mueller

It’s difficult to say that anyone on the 2004 Boston Red Sox is underrated—hell, little used reliever Curtis Leskanic receives hosannas when he comes back to town. This is all deserved, that team fucking rules.

But one of the more under appreciated, anonymous players was third baseman Bill Mueller. Yes, everyone knows about the glorious hit through the box against Mariano Rivera driving in Dave Roberts in the ninth inning of Game Four of the ALCS. That’s the hit that exposed a chink in the armor of the great beast. That's the hit that showed the Sox that the Russian can bleed. That’s the hit that began the greatest comeback in all of sports history.

But while absolutely amazing, that hit shouldn't have been a surprise. Mueller was a professional hitter. All he did was hit He hit at home. He hit on the road. Day games, he hit. Night games too. He pounded out hits against the American League. When it was time for interleague games, he hammered National League pitching. He hit in Spring Training, during the regular season and the post season.

During the ARod glove to the face game, who won that game with a ninth inning ding dong johnson off Rivera? Bill fucking Mueller did, that’s who.

Mueller came to the Sox in the 2002-03 offseason with David Ortiz, Kevin Millar and Jeremy Giambi. The Sox already had the immortal Shea Hillenbrand at third. Epstein wanted to improve production at first, third and DH. He figured that three of those five guys would solve those problems.

And he was right.

The first year Mueller was in Boston, the switch hitter lead the league in batting average. The second year he became the first hitter ever to hit two grand slams from each side of the plate in one game.

On a team full of extra large personalities, Mueller went about his work and perfected his craft. Hit after hit, game after game, season after season. He was a metronome. Not only could he hit for average and power but he was a damn fine third baseman. Did Mueller ever make an error? I’m sure he did. Do I remember any? No I don’t.

You may have heard of a comedian’s comedian or a writer’s writer, Bill Mueller was a ball player’s ball player. Everything he did was just right.

I loved watching him play.

14. Jon Lester

Lester is the best left handed that the Sox drafted and developed since Bruce Hurst and is probably the overall best pitcher to come out of their system since Roger Clemens.

It always sucks when the Sox (or any pro team) low balls a player, but it especially sucked with Lester. It was just weird for them to do that. He’s a home grown player that was beloved by the fans. Due to his battle with lymphoma, he was a tireless worker for the Jimmy Fund. Both his illness and charity work have increased his standing with the Boston fans and the Sox were like, “nah, we’ll move on”.

I get that pro sports is a business but I think that there are players you make an exception for. Jon Lester was one of those guys.

Lester came up in 2005 and had a pretty good year, he was 7-2 with a high ERA but there was enough there to think that he’d be a player. His sophomore season was interrupted when he was diagnosed with lymphoma.

After treatments he came back in the middle of 2007 season and provided a shot in the arm for the Sox pitching staff. He started—and won—Game 4 of the World Series, which happened to be the day my eldest daughter was born. It was a remarkable comeback and Lester kept rolling.

2008 saw him throw a no-hitter, and after two very solid seasons, he was named an All-Star in 2010. 2011 was a mixed bag for both the Sox and Lester as the team gagged a big lead and Lester was implicated in the “chicken and beer” fiasco that vilified 3/5s of the starting pitching staff.

The other two “culprits” Josh Beckett and John Lackey got far more scrutiny than Lester did but he got a bit. This was sort of a strange era for Lester. He was born and lived most of his life in Washington state but for some reason he began speaking with a Texas accent around this time. It was kinda like when Madonna married Guy Ritchie and she thought she was English. I don’t know whether it was because he wanted to impress the Texas born Beckett but it was annoying. I think he dropped it after Beckett was sent to LA as part of the Punto trade.

Dumb voice choices aside, in 2013 he was part of another World Series championship and the following year he was sent to the Oakland Athletics when he couldn’t come to terms with Boston on a contract extension.

Seeing Lester as an A was just strange, seeing him as a Cub wasn’t as strange but it didn’t look right either. Seeing him as a National or a Cardinal was not as jarring because I don’t recall these stops very much.

The Red Sox are like any other franchise, they make good moves and bad ones. Not signing Jon Lester was a particularly dumb one that took the Sox a few years to repair. There’s a cliche that says, “if the front office listens to the fans, they’ll soon be sitting with the fans” and that’s probably correct more times than it’s not.

This time, it wasn’t.

13. Dustin Pedroia

Baseball is the most democratic (small d) of all sports. What I mean by this is that it doesn’t matter how big you are, how fast you are, how tall you are; if you have great hand-eye coordination you will play. Chances are, you'll play well.

Dustin Pedroia is about a foot shorter than current star Aaron Judge. Despite their height differences both are former MVPs and both are Hall of Fame candidates. I think that many fans gravitate towards the Pedroia types because they see themselves in him.

It’s hard to see yourself as a football player, you have to be the size of a fridge and run faster than a Ferrari. Basketball? Only if you’re freakishly tall. Hockey player. Do you have world class hand-eye coordination? Cool. Can you do it on a millimeter thick piece of metal on ice?

Even someone like Judge is tough to relate to because he’s incredibly athletic for his height. But Pedroia? He’s 5’7”, I’m taller than 5’7”. Not only that but Pedroia played the game the way we think we’d play: all-out hustle, dirty uniform, getting your nose in everything.

Pedroia was more than that, of course. He could flat out rake and he was nails at second base. A leader on the team, he was acerbic and funny and he seemed like a genuinely cool guy. Everyone loved him from Terry Francona to David Ortiz to Alex Cora. The only person who didn’t seem to love him was Bobby Valentine, who was about as popular as rug burn in Boston.

He won an MVP award, Rookie of the Year, was a multiple All-Star and was part of three World Championship teams. So Pedroia was a mirage, right? Due to his height you may think you’re as good as him but you’re not. You’re nowhere near his level.

That’s okay. The world has use for mirages, it does the opposite of grounding us, it gives us hope. Without ballplayers like Dustin Pedroia, how are we to dream that we can do anything? Pedroia is essential to the MLB fan experience.

12. Jim Rice

Whenever you started following sports, you always had a first favorite player. Someone who was larger than life and could do no wrong. For me, that was Jim Rice. He was the first player that I can remember seeing on TV. In my mind’s eye, I can picture him at bat: 12 feet tall, weighing about 500 pounds gripping his bat like a toothpick just daring a pitcher to make a mistake.

By the time I started following the Sox, he was settling into a part of his career when the Fenway Faithful sorta took him for granted. This is an era that happens with all Boston greats where if they don’t deliver every. Single. Time. They’re overpaid bums. People used to joke that Rice’s license plate was 6-4-3, for his seeming propensity to bounce into double-plays “when the team needed him the most”. Of course, that’s not true, Rice delivered more times than not.

In 1986 Rice had his last really great year, leading (with Roger Clemens) the Sox to the World Series against the Mets. I think the Sox won that year but I also passed out for two weeks after the top of the tenth of Game 6, so who knows?

Speaking of World Series, in late 1975 Rice broke a bone when he was hit with a pitch by Angels pitcher Vern Ruhle. Considering how close that Series was without the slugger, could history have been different if a healthy Rice was in the lineup?

From all accounts Rice was considered “the most feared slugger in the American League” and he rode that perception into the Hall of Fame on his last year on the ballot. Should Jim Rice be in Cooperstown? I don't know. If you’re a small hall person who didn’t grow up with him, no. But I’m a big hall guy whose first favorite player was Jim Rice, so I definitely think he deserves it.

Rice has settled into a role with the Sox where he shows up at Spring Training (gets yelled at by shithead front office types) and is on NESN during the regular season. For a guy who was notoriously prickly to the media, I’m glad that Rice never faded away.

To me he’s a great reminder of my childhood and why I loved baseball.

11. Ellis Burks

Like I’ve said a million times, I began seriously watching baseball in 1986 which, the way 99.8% of the season went, was a pretty awesome introduction to the sport.

Aside from one night in October, the one thing that sucked was that it impacted how I thought roster construction should be. That year the Sox’ philosophy was to get a bunch of big dudes and try to hit the ball out of the park. Speed was not part of the equation at all. It would taker an on-base machine like Wade Boggs three singles to score if he walked.

But pretty much everywhere aside from Boston, teams were promoting athletes—players who could hit and run as well as field. Eric Davis in Cincinnati. Rickey in New York. Darryl Strawberry also in New York. Kirby Puckett in Minnesota Jose Canseco in Oakland. Tim Raines in Montreal. And there was also a push towards dudes who could run and catch: Willie Wilson in Kansas City, practically everyone in St. Louis.

The point is, baseball was moving towards athletes. Boston was firm in not doing that. Over 30, old guys was what they were going to build around. Flipping from a Sox game to a Cardinals game was like going from Earth to Neptune.

When Ellis Burks was promoted from Pawtucket, Red Sox nation collective exclaimed, “finally, we have our athlete!” Burks showed up and he was fast, he had power, he could hit for average and he could field. He was a four-tool player (I don’t think his arm was that great) but it didn’t matter, we finally had our Willie Mays!

Burks had several solid seasons with Boston but the problem was, he was always getting hurt. That tends to happen when Mike Greenwell is playing on your right, but there were still plenty of non-Gator injuries.

I remember being bummed out when Burks was elected to the 1990 All-Star but he couldn’t play because he was hurt. I recall Burks jogging out to the first base line in Wrigley and thinking, “so close, man. This sucks for him.” After a few more injury plagued seasons, the Sox let him go. This is when Burks flipped the switch and became a star. First in Chicago, then Colorado, then San Francisco and Cleveland before coming back to Boston in 2004. Every stop aside from his last never ended in a Championship.

But, I’m not sure if you heard this before, the Boston Red Sox won it all in 2004. Did Ellis Burks play? Of course not. But the coolest thing was when the plane landed in Boston after their flight from home from St. Louis, who was the person walking out the door with the trophy? Burks.

Burks always represented the future. From the time he showed up at Fenway, Boston is taking part in the modern game! To his injuries, just wait until Burks comes back, then we’ll be clicking. Until he didn’t.

And ironically, that's when he had his most success, when he wasn't in Boston. However when he joined the team in 2004 it was a link to the past. Burks seemed to represent all of the players who were on those close-but-no-cigar teams, the teams that were out of it by Memorial Day, the teams that were good but never great.

Ellis was our avatar. I can’t prove this but for a lot of people my age, Ellis Burks was their favorite player because he was the future and at that time, we were too. Over his 17 seasons we grew, changed, had families, excelled, failed, reached some of our potential and fell short in other places. Just like Gen-X hero Burks. So when Ellis walked off that plane, brother that was all of us. That’s how we want to go out, a champion!

How can you not relate to that?

My favorite stadiums 13-7

 13.

 

We are 13 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're here today in the City of Brotherly Love as today's stadium is Citizen's Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia, PA home of the Philadelphia Phillies.

 

Much like the clump of ballparks that I've reviewed in the last week or so, CBB (Citizen's Bank Ballpark, not Comedy Bang! Bang!) is a great, modern park. It has all the amenities that you would want: tons of leg room at your seat, great sight lines, cool stuff to look at when the game slows down, spacious concourses where you can pretty much eat whatever you want.

 

There's no downside to CBB, it's an absolute gem of a park. Ryan and I sat on the leftfield side in the second or third deck and had a terrific view of the field of action.

 

* A quick aside: here's one very cool thing about Philadelphia, there is a bar that serves my all-time favorite beer: Pliny the Elder. If you know anything about this brew, made by Russian River, it's that it's really only available in the Bay Area (we also found another bar that had it on tap when we visited Denver to see the Rockies play). For some crazy reason, there is a small bar called Monk's Cafe where they have this available.

 

When I saw it on the menu, I almost lost my mind. Pliny? Here? On the east coast? Our waiter didn't seem to give a shit and had no further information. But it was great. If you ever find yourself in Philly, find Monk's Cafe and grab a Pliny. Your taste buds will thank you and then you'll thank me.

 

Anyway the park is amazing. Like Truist Field, Citi Field, Great American Ball Park and the others, there is a ton of history on the walls. There are statues of great Phillies dotting the areas surrounding the stadium. It's modern ballpark building 101 and, I love it.

 

But I got to wondering ... as a person who has had Fenway Park as his favorite team's home, the Red Sox park has changed a bit since when I started going there (1983) but not drastically so. For Phillies fans (and Pirates, Reds, Cards, etc) their game watching experience has changed immensely. Those teams all played in the "futuristic" multi-sport bowls that were dimly lit and filled with astroturf.

 

Now the teams play on grass, in brightly lit parks on grass. Where once these teams relied on strong pitching and slapping the ball around and running and running and running, there's more of a preponderance of swinging for the short(er) fences.

 

Yes, pitching is still key; but as Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine once opined: chicks dig the long ball. What's it like to go from Veteran's Stadium to CBB? It must be like going from an Atari 2600 to an xBox, from AM to SiriusXM, from a Model T to a Lamborghini. What I'm trying to say is that the jump from then to now must've been pretty huge.

 

Did everyone like it? I'm guess with the way the world is, I bet a bunch of people pined for the Vet. "There's not even a jail at Citizen's Bank Park!" (Yes, there was a jail at Veteran's Stadium. Philly fans are the best, or the worst, you decide.) It would be hard to leave any place that you had great memories in.

The Vet saw a lot of really good Phillies (and Eagles) teams, so there is a ton of great recollections of the first World Championship in franchise history, two other World Series appearances, playoff games, no-hitters, the careers of Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton and tons of others. Going to a new home without all of that stuff must be hard. I could see why some people might not like it.

 

As someone who never went to the Vet, I can't do an honest comparison. All I know is that CBB is a great park and the Vet (from TV at least) looked like shit. There was nothing really unique about it. The turf looked old. The aesthetics were drab and it just looked like a place you'd try to avoid playing at. As an outside, maybe I don't get what made the Vet so special and I never will. But CBB seems to be an upgrade.

Rye and I also tried the steak and cheeses from Pat and Geno's. I believe that I was a Pat's man and Rye preferred Geno's, or it could be the opposite, I don't recall. In any event, the day left with me driving back to Massachusetts and Ryan walking home.

 

We never spoke again. City of Brotherly Love? More like City of Brotherly Hate.

 

Here's the box score of the last game I ever saw with my best buddy Ryan: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2022/B08050PHI2022.htm No current or probably future Hall of Famers in this game, Bryce Harper was hurt, but we did get to see internet meme Nick Castellanos play as well as former Red Sox Kyle Schwarber. How's that for something? Now that I think about it, maybe JT Realmuto finds his way to Cooperstown, but he has a lot of work to do.

 

Everyone on the Nats sucked--what a god awful team--Kyle Gibson went eight efficient innings in a 7-2 victory. This was a fun Phillies team, one that would make the World Series that year with a big run at the end of the year and into October. They'd lose to Houston in six, but that's how memories are made.

12.

 

We are 12 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're here today in Motown as today's stadium is Comerica Park in Detroit, MI home of the Detroit Tigers.

 

People love the past. They wallow in nostalgia. Everything that happened when they were younger is infinitely better than what's going on today. This isn't a Boomer slam, it's just human nature. If you read enough stuff from the times that you're fetishizing, you'll see that most people weren't too happy about the times that they were presently living in and wanted to go back to teh halcyon days of a generation or two ago.

 

It's hardwired in our DNA and I doubt it's ever going to change.

 

Therefore I wonder what baseball fans thought when these new parks opened up. Sure, I bet that most of them were happy about the new amenities, the chance to create new memories at the new park while at the same time sad because their old house was abandoned and ultimately torn down.

 

But what about the cranks? The people who love nothing more than staying the same? Angry that Candlestick Park in San Francisco was torn down and replaced with a new place that has a giant slide in left field. Pissed off that there's a swimming pool in right field in Bank One Ballpark in Arizona. Furious that Comerica Park has an actual working carousel in the concourse behind home plate.

 

I get that I just pretty much argued the opposite when I brought up Camp Nou where there were no distractions and people watched the game and enjoyed the traditional sporting experience without any distractions. What was it like for a Tiger fan to go from an old-school stadium like Tigers Stadium (which was built in 1912, like Fenway) to a place like Comerica Park? I have no idea.

 

I never went to Tigers Stadium. In retrospect, I wish that I did, from what I understand each section was so close to the field. But from every picture or telecast that I saw coming from that park, it appeared that it was cold, dank, on the verge of raining, just a dreary place to watch a game.

 

On the other hand, Comerica Park is bright and vibrant, with giant tiger statues all over the place. It's one of the only parks to have that little dirt path between home and the pitchers mound--I love this little path it's like if the catcher doesn't know where to go after his meeting on the mound, he can just follow the path back to home plate. Also the area around home plate looks like a house. How awesome is that?

 

It's the whimsy that I really love about this place, though I'm not sure that I'd describe Detroit as whimsical. Tough? Grimy? Overcast? Sure but not whimsical--that's a word reserved for Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, at least before it started straight up murdered a bunch of shithead kids.

 

Anyway, Comerica Park was awesome. Ryan and I sat out in the rightfield bleachers on a warm Detroit night and had a great time. BTW if you haven't yet, find a friend like Ryan who will go to places like Detroit with you. Speaking of Detroit, it's not a bad city to hang out in at all.

 

All you hear about is how dangerous Detroit is and how it's not safe for anyone. But the parts that we saw were cool as hell. The bartenders that we spoke to were all nice, one implored us to tell everyone back home that Detroit was cool and "if you look like a tourist, you won't get shot here. We only shoot our own." Which, good to fucking know.

 

Getting back to my original question, I bet that there was a swath of Tiger fans who were super cranky that Tigers Stadium was torn down and swore on their mother's graves that they would never step into that frou-frou Comerica Park. "We don't need that kinda shit around here," my strawman would exclaim. But I hope that they did because new doesn't mean bad. And old doesn't mean good. You still have your memories and just because you can't point to the place where Ty Cobb took a whiz on a fan who said "Cobb runs like he had one too many sarsaparillas" doesn't mean that it sucks.

 

So go to Detroit and go to Comerica Park. You'll have a great time.

 

Here's the box score of the game that we saw that day: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2021/B06110DET2021.htm This was kind of a bummer of a game, no Hall of Famers but Tiger first baseman Miguel Cabrera will sail in on his first try. New Red Sox waste of money Lucas Giolitio started for the White Sox and pitched pretty okay. 

 

The Chicago club won and the Tiger fans went home unhappy. First grandpa can't point to his favorite urine spot and now a loss, will Detroit ever come back?

 

11.

 

 

We are 11 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're making our last trip to the Windy Apple as today's stadium is Yankee Stadium I in New York, NY former home of the New York Yankees.

 

There are more than a few people who will say that once they updated Yankee Stadium in the mid 1970s, the original Yankee Stadium died and a new one rose from its ashes. In other words, this should be Yankee Stadium II. But I don't subscribe to that. This Yankee Stadium is the same as old Yankee Stadium.

 

Yes, it was refurbished. Yes there are myriad differences. But at the end of the day, they didn't move (until they did) and the playing field in 1977 is at the same place as it was in 1927.

 

I'm not going to get into spoilers here, but this entry, along with the next two entries, should be lower in my rankings than the last four or five parks that we just covered. Aesthetically these new parks are much nicer, cleaner and offer better sight lines than the next three future parks. The concourses are wider, there are more things to do, better amenities, all of that stuff.

 

However, there's something about these parks where when you walk into them for the first time, you are hit with something (and it's not the smell of decades old stale urine). You're hit with a reverence (nah, that's too corny of a word for an athletic field), a sense that a lot of important things have happened here.

I don't wholeheartedly buy into the whole sports-connects-me-to-past-generations thing, mainly because I'm a cynic (with the heart of an optimist!) and MLB has been stuffing that down my throat for decades. But it is pretty awesome to walk into a place where so many people sat and cheered for the same team that I'm going to cheer for today.

 

That's really cool. It's one of the reasons why we follow sports, right? To get into something that's bigger than us. To feel the emotions that our parents and grandparents and great grandparents all felt.

 

Going to an older ball park is the best way of doing that. When my grandfather was a kid, he had to listen to the Sox on the radio. When my mom was young, she followed the games on a black and white TV. When I was a lad, it was a color TV but in low definition. If my kids ever follow the Sox, they'll be doing so in high-def on their phones. We're doing the same thing, but not exactly.

 

But when you went to Yankee Stadium I, you could conceivably sit in the same section that your grandfather did. Watch the game from the same POV as your Mom. Boo the Yanks like your kids will (hopefully) do. It's that connective tissue that can tie a family together. It's a beautiful thing.

Eventually these new parks will get there and as long as they aren't being torn down every 20 years, they will. But for right now, we should really try to hold on to the past just a little bit longer.

 

As far as the park itself, Yankee Stadium I was okay. It was kind of crumbling, sorta dirty. I remember everyone being on top of each other (we had cheap seats the two times that I went) but people weren't complete assholes either. I saw the Red Sox play the Yanks twice and even though I had my Boston hat on, I don't recall anyone giving us a ton of shit. Good natured ribbing, but nothing totally aggressive.

 

It was a nice place to watch a ballgame in the summer. It also seemed more democratic than the new place. There weren't 1,000 private boxes. There wasn't a moat separating the super expensive seats from the kinda expensive seats. I mean, the Yankees are the Yankees and they're going to swing their bats around (if you know what I mean) but it wasn't so blatant and gross in the old place.

 

The new place feels like a club that's too expensive to get into. At least with the old place, it didn't feel like I was going to be tossed on my ass for not spending enough.

 

Here's the box score of the first game that I went to: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2002/B06010NYA2002.htm there were two Hall of Famers in this game (both Yankees) Derek "Jetes" Jeter and Mike Mussina. Mussina had a pretty good game limiting two runs. Rolando Arrojo, Darren Oliver, Rich "El Guapo" Garces and Sun Woo Kim gave up 10 runs to the Bombers.

 

Carlos Baerga was the Red Sox DH and Brian Daubach played left field for some reason (Jose Offerman was at first). Somebody named Bry Nelson finished the game at second.

 

What a weird game.

 

10. 

 

 

We are 10 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're making our way to the City of Broad Shoulders as today's stadium is Wrigley Field in Chicago, IL home of the Chicago Cubs.

 

Look at the image that I attached to this post; isn't Wrigley Field an absolute beautiful place to see a game? It's perfect with the green green grass, the lushness of the ivy covering the brick walls, the rich browns of the dirt, the splashes blue and red that add contrast to the rest of the park. It's the Platonic Ideal of a baseball park. If you dream of baseball, it's what you go to bed thinking of every night whether you like the Cubs or not.

 

But based on my experiences, Wrigley isn't that great. I've gone twice, so I contend that I may not have been in the right headspace both times and that maybe the third part is the charm for Wrigley visits. If I were to rank these parks only by my experiences, Wrigley would be at the bottom of the list.

 

But the place is so pretty, how could I do that? Top ten seems about right, but a majority of that ranking is due to potential.

 

The first time I went to Wrigley, it was a night game where me and co-worker* sat on the first base side in some pretty decent seats that weren't too expensive. The people next to us were super nice, I think that they actually bought us both a hot dog and beer and we had a swell time. But it was kinda cold, the place seemed dark (at least the way it is in my mind's eye) and the stadium seemed a bit run down.

 

I know that Wrigley has had lights since 1988, but it's still strange to me to see night games there. Being at Wrigley at night was cool (especially because if there was a day game, I wouldn't have been able to go) but I didn't think that I had the full Wrigley experience. I was bummed about that.

 

* For a million dollars, I couldn't tell you the name of this co-worker. I can picture what he looked like back when we went and I'm sure he's changed now, but I don't even think I remember his first name. I was thinking about this earlier today and I thought that his name was Mark, but he didn't look like a Mark. He looked more like a Bob or a Mike or a Jim. Definitely not a Mark, but for some reason I'm going back to that.

 

Anyway, what's interesting (may be a strong word) is that I worked at this place for about a year and I saw this guy every single day. In fact, I'd say that outside of my wife, I probably saw this guy more than I saw my family that year. Not that we were particularly close, but when you sit in the vicinity of someone for 40 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, that's a lot of time. And now, I can't remember his name at all. It's like he never existed to me. It's kinda fucked up how the mind works, I suppose. There one minute and then gone the next. I wonder when the exact moment was when I forgot this dude's name and I wonder what piece of information replaced that original data.

 

The next time I went to Wrigley, I really wanted to do it the right way. Go all out, see the game from one of the most popular seats in all of baseballdom. Me and a bunch of buddies got tickets to see the Cubs play the Cardinals on an August Friday. The way that the Cubs do pricing is on a sliding scale, you pay for the better teams in nicer weather on the weekends than you would on other days against crappier teams.

For example, my seats were $100 due to how desirable they were--this was to the Cubs box office, not StubHub. In contrast, the same seats to a Wednesday game in April against the Reds were $15. So there's quite a premium.

 

I understood that the Wrigley bleachers were general admission and that seemed fine when I got the tickets. The reality of what this meant didn't occur to me until we got to the park. Wrigleyville is a cool neighborhood with a bunch of fun bars and places to have a few before you waddle into the stadium. So even though the park was open, we all wanted to stop at a place or two to wet our whistles.

 

We got to the park in time for the National Anthem (we're PATRIOTS!) and it finally dawned on me just what general admission means. It means looking for a seat in an already crowded bleachers filled with drunk folks who are not getting up or moving their stuff for anyone. You kinda have to be a dick to find somewhere to sit and they, naturally, respond to you in kind.

 

The thing about day drinking is that it usually leads to day peeing. And in order to go to the bathroom you need to leave your seat, fight through a crowd and get to the facilities. While there you have to pray that no one swiped "your" seat--because it's not your seat and everyone is entitled to sit somewhere and if you shuffle your feet, brother ... well you know the rest.

 

This is also true of going to the concession stand to get brews or food. If you have a good seat in the bleachers, you're not getting up. Ever. For anything. For a guy in his 40s, that sucks.

 

The crowd around us wasn't great either. Everyone, from the bros next to us to the bachelorette party directly behind us, was smashed. Not some sort of cute, "Oops I'm a little tipsy! Sorry!" kind of drunk, but the it's Saturday fucking night at 2:00 am and we're so god damn wasted that every word sounds like a threat that must be met with a high screech type of drunk that we've all experienced but all hate. Multiply that by 10,000 people and that's the Wrigley bleacher experience.

 

I think that if I was still in my 20s, I'd have loved the bleachers. I could get black out drunk with the best of them back in the day and I think I could have had a lot of fun pounding Old Styles, (trying to) talk to chicks, slurring with the bros next to me. But I wasn't. I was 40 something and just watching this kind of day drinking exhausted me. And it made me a little annoyed that I wasn't younger. That was mostly on me, not the people around me. But maybe a little on them too because these folks were shitheads.

 

So those were my times at Wrigley; a beautiful park that maybe I put too much pressure on. I'm not sure whether I thought that I'd have this experience that was going to alter my life; like I was going to some hardball Mecca or something. At the end of the day, it's a park where millionaires throw a ball around for three hours. Some really cool shit happened there over the years, see yesterdays entry on that, but it's not going to be transformative no matter what my expectations were.

 

Life lesson: don't get your hopes up, kids. Wow. That's too cynical, even for a prick like me.

Here's the box score of the first game that I went to: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2006/B05170CHN2006.htm This was a rock fight between two teams (Cubs and Nationals) that were going to finish in the cellars of their respective divisions. There are no Hall of Famers any where near these teams. If you're a Twin fan, you may have gotten a charge out of seeing Jacques Jones play for the Cubs, for you Red Sox prospect humpers Matt Murton made an appearance for Chicago. 2007 Red Sox World Series champion Royce Clayton made an appearance for the Nats and former Yankee future keystones Nick Johnson and Alfonso Soriano played for Washington.

 

Chicago won 5-0 as Sean Marshall did pretty okay. He went six with six K's and only giving up one hit. More former Red Sox relievers pitched in on the shut out (Bob Howry and Curt Schilling best buddy Scott Williamson).

 

Like the person I was with, an imminently forgettable game.

 

9. 

 

 

We are 9 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're making our way to Beantown as today's stadium is Fenway Park in Boston, MA home of the Boston Red Sox.

 

I've been to Fenway Park more than 120 times. The first game that I went to was with my Dad and it was a double header in 1983. Forty one years ago. I've been to at least one game at the Fens every year since 1986, except for 1992. I have no idea why I didn't go to Fenway when I was a senior in high school (it's not because I was awash with the ladies, that's for fucking sure) but I broke a six season streak and it kinda bugs me, if I'm being honest.

 

Aside from the Monster Seats, I bet that I've sat in every single section at least once. There are some really good seats and there some really terrible ones. In most of these posts, I've only been to the park I'm writing about maybe once so I can only offer my perspective of the place from where I sat. But at Fenway, I've had a ton of POVs and writing about them would end up being dull. So I'm going to focus on the park as a whole.

 

If I'm also being honest, if Fenway Park wasn't my "home" stadium, it would probably be ranked higher. But when you go to a place a lot, then you start to see the cracks in its facade. The prices to get inside the place are insane. The concessions are even more expensive. There are a bunch of seats in right field that are situated so that your view is of center field. There are other seats behind poles. Even unobstructed and home plate facing seats were built for people from over 100 years ago. The concourses are cramped as hell and if you don't like overcrowded spaces, you're SOL.

 

Having said all that, Fenway is still a great take. One of the best things that the FSG ownership has done is to maximize the space that they have and really make it more of a modern space. I mean, it's not going to ever look like a stadium built in the last 20 years, but it doesn't feel like a house that has been allowed to  fall into disrepair.

 

Would I like to see a new park? Of course, I think that the Sox have outgrown Fenway. But it's not going to happen, especially now when the Sox aren't very good and the center of the team's marketing events is the park itself. Plus Sox owner John Henry is furiously buying up every parcel of land around Fenway so that he can have his own Battery of shops and restaurants, like the Atlanta Braves.

 

Instead of having fans come to the Back Bay for 81 days, why not have them come for 365? Being a landlord is the best thing now for pro sports team owners.

 

My first memory of going to a Sox game doesn't really revolve around the game itself, but what was happening around me. My Dad and I won tickets in a Little League drawing. The game that we were supposed to go to was rained out and instead of our good, box seats we got stuck with bleacher seats.

 

BUT, instead of one game, we got two. Yes, we went to an old fashioned doubleheader, two games for the price of one (in this case two games for the price of none). So on a beautiful Saturday morning, I woke up and grabbed my glove and jumped in my Dad's car. It felt like it took forever, but we finally got to Boston, parked the car and went into the park.

 

We found our seats and I remember the sun being really hot that day and just beating on me. However I didn't care, TWO GAMES! As I was staring out at the field, my gaze turned to two guys a couple of rows ahead of us. They were passing a cigarette back and forth. I was really confused--not because people were smoking, it was the 80s everyone smoked--but that they were sharing a cigarette. Maybe they were poor?

A lady in front of me must have noticed my confusion because she said (and this quote has been burned in my brain for 41 years), "You know what they're doing? DRUGS!"

 

That freaked me the fuck out. You have to remember that this was 1983, marijuana wasn't legal, Nancy Reagan was going hard on her war against all kinds of drugs with her "Just Say No" propaganda, drugs were a scary, scary thing to this kid. I grabbed my Dad's arm and said, "We have to go right now. Please."

He looked at me like I was insane. Now he was confused. "What do you mean? We just got here." I didn't want to admit to my father that people were doing ... drugs in our vicinity. Maybe I thought that it would scare him or that he'd try to fight those guys, but I just said that I didn't feel good and that we had to leave immediately*.

 

* This was an excuse I used a year prior when I begged him to take me to see "Empire Strikes Back", we drove to Salem, MA, bought the tickets, popcorn and other snacks and the second we walked into the dark theater and I saw Darth Vader, I got scared and wanted to leave. He was understandably unhappy about that.

 

This time, we weren't leaving. We drove into Boston, we paid for parking, he bought me a bunch of food and a souvenir, we had 18 innings of baseball to watch. We weren't going anywhere.

 

"By, we have a long day. Let's just have some fun."

 

But I didn't relax or had a lot of fun. I kept imagining the FBI busting into the bleachers, arresting everyone on sight and throwing us in jail. I was way too young to go to jail (still am!) and I kept one eye on the game and one on the stairway just waiting for inevitable.

 

But it never happened and I spent five hours on a razor's edge of fear and worry. Which, now that I think about it is how I spend my time watching the Red Sox when they're in the playoffs. Since this was my first experience at a ball game, I'm not sure why I love the sport and going to ballparks so much. Seems kinda strange, no?

 

I'm not sure if I ever told my Dad what made me so nervous that day. I guess that I should have, we both would have had a real nice laugh about it.

 

Here are two boxscores from the day that I first went to Fenway Park: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1983/B08131BOS1983.htm and https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1983/B08132BOS1983.htm

 

During those 18 innings, I got to see a grand total of FIVE Hall of Famers, which is nuts. For the Sox, I saw Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Wade Boggs. For the Royals George Brett and Gaylord Perry played. The Sox lost the first game and Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd pitched a complete game in 12-3 shellacking. Jim Rice hit a couple of dingers in the night cap and Hal McRae went deep for the Royals in the first one.

 

8.

 

 

We are 8 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're making our way to Suds City as today's stadium is American Family Field in Milwaukee, WI home of the Milwaukee Brewers.

 

Let's get this out of the way first, American Family Field is a stupid name for a ballpark. It's an especially stupid name for a ballpark in Wisconsin for a team called the Brewers. The original name: Miller Park made the most sense. As we all know, Miller is the name of a brewery. The Brewers should play at a park named after a brewery.

 

American Family is an insurance company. No one should play at a stadium that sold its name to a boring old insurance company. It's so dumb.

 

American Family Field, fuck it I'm calling it Miller Park because that's what it was known when I went there, is a park that doesn't look like it belongs in Wisconsin. It's a futuristic technical marvel the way that the stadium opens and closes. I am absolutely not saying that Wisconsin is a backwards state, it's not. But what I am saying is that when you think of Wisconsin you think of rolling dells, wheat fields as far as the eye can see, cows chewing on cud, a land of milk and cheese, the simple pleasures in life. Just an all around slower pace of living. Or at least I do, I've been in Wisconsin for a grand total of 22 hours, so what do I know.

 

What I do know is that plunking this Jetsons-like structure on the outskirts of Milwaukee seems strange. But guess what? In this case, strange works. Miller Field is an awesome place to take in a game. It's one of the top tier stadia that I've ever been to.

 

The year that we went to check out the Brew Crew, they weren't very good. While the place was 80% sold out, there were a bunch of seats still open. Since the game wasn't a nail biter, we walked around and sat in just about every open seat that we spied. We even sat two rows behind home plate for an entire inning, and unlike the seat Nazis in Texas, no one said a thing.

 

I have to say every seat that we sat in was pretty good. Great sight lines, lots of elbow room and no poles in the way (both the steel girder or people of Polish descent). It was a real treat to be at Miller Park.

We went to Miller Park on the same trip we went to Wrigley Field and if you told me that I'd like Miller Park better than Wrigley before we went, I'd have said you were nuts. But I did. I liked Miller Park way more than Wrigley. It was just a better overall experience and I wasn't surround by a bunch of drunk pricks. I was surrounded by drunks, but they were cool as hell.

 

That's saying nothing about the atmosphere.

 

The best part of Miller Park is when a Brewer hits a home run, club mascot Bernie the Brewer sticks his head out of his German chalet in centerfield and slides down a slide into a big bucket. Balloons lift up from bucket and everyone goes crazy. Back at the old place (County Stadium), he'd slide into a giant beer stein, but they didn't bring that with them when they moved.

 

Another fun thing they do is the sausage race. In between the sixth inning (I think, could be sooner) five people in gigantic sausage suitss: Polish, German, Italian, chorizo and hot dog all run around the perimeter of the ballpark. You bet on who's going to win. Most of the time, they fall over or run in circles and it's cute for the families at the game.

 

Most of the people we met at the game were friendly too. They love to chat, mostly about food and beer. To a person each one says that before every game they tailgate in the Miller Park parking lot. I've never heard of tailgating before a baseball game, but I love this idea so much. Eighty one parties BEFORE you get into the game. How awesome is that?

 

Unlike other new stadiums, there wasn't a lot in terms of a Brewers Museum, but they did have a kiosk set up where you can buy a Brewers shirsey and put your name and number on the back. Myself and my two buddies thought it would be fun to put: Cunningham, Potsie and Malph on the back of our shirts (no one could be Fonzi). And guess what, we were right.

 

If you haven't been to Milwaukee and enjoy drinking, you should go. It's a fun ass city that's completely underrated--especially in the summer. Not only that, but if the Brewers are in town, you should go. Even if the team sucks, the stadium is a blast. You don't have to hurry there though, the team just signed a lease that will keep there for another 25 years.

 

Here's a box score of the game that we saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2016/B08130MIL2016.htm The Brew Crew got smoked like a sausage by the Reds 11-5. There are no current Hall of Famers, but Reds first baseman Joey Votto went 4-5 and I bet he sails into Cooperstown.

 

7. 

 

We are 7 days away from The Real National Hot Dog Day and we're counting down the stadiums I've been to in order from worst to best.

 

We're making our way to northern Ohio as today's stadium is Progressive Field in Cleveland, OH home of the Cleveland Guardians.

 

Yesterday I said that Milwaukee is an underrated fun city and I stand by that. However I think that Cleveland takes the cake in that regard. For decades, Cleveland has been the butt of every joke about an American city. I'm not sure exactly why as the time that I went there, it was really lovely.

 

We saw the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, which was meh as far as Hall of Fames go. Aside from being a tourist trap, I'm not sure what the point of a Hall of Fame dedicated to rock n' roll is. Yeah, it's a good place to honor all of the artists who have been popular since the rock n' roll era dawned, but are there kids forming bands right this second who are dreaming of one day entering these hallowed halls?

 

I don't think so. At least not in the way young athletes dream of reaching their sports' pinnacle. Music never really fades all the way away, like an athlete does. Even elderly one-hit wonders still travel the country playing their songs and their fans still come out to see them. Even if the band is made up of the original bassist and four guys who never recorded together on an album.

 

I'd argue that a Hall of Fame is about memories and keeping the spirits of the greats alive. The music of recording artists from the 50s can still be found. The Beatles, who came to American shores 60 years ago, are still as popular today as they were in the 60s. Same with the Rolling Stones (who still tour!) and the Who and Elvis and Led Zeppelin and myriad other bands.

 

It doesn't seem needed.

 

I know that this is a weird way to begin an entry on Progressive Field, or Jacobs Field as it was known when I went there, however if you are interested in popular music, the RnRHoF is a good way of getting you to Cleveland. When we went, there were a ton of things to do. We found a lot of cool divey bars, including one where MLB umpires do their imbibing, with a lot of interesting, friendly people.

 

But while you may come for the Hall, stay for Progressive Field. It really is one of the better places to watch a game. When we went the Indians* (now the Guardians) weren't very good. There was still a nice crowd there though. We had lower bowl seats on the third baseline and it was a great take.

 

* I'm not one of those people who get caught up and bugged out by name changes. If you are, that's cool, I just don't care very much. Most of the old names that we love (Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers) were all arbitrarily chosen by newsmen who were sick of writing, "The Boston Nationals today beat the Brooklyn Nationals by a score of 4-3 in a game that took one hour and 45 minutes to play. For the Bostons second sacker Rabbit Marranville had two base knocks and a stolen bag as Boston scored three runs in the third frame."

 

The newer names are focus grouped to death and are so sanded down and devoid of local color that the Oklahoma City Thunder could pull up stakes and become the Albuquerque Thunder tomorrow and no one would bat an eye. As a person who was a member of more than a few Amesbury Fighting Indian teams back in my youth, I always thought that it was a little strange to be playing on a team that had zero Native Americans on it.

 

I guess it was supposed to honor the people whose land we stole and gave small pox to, but it didn't seem like an honor. I think that a majority of Native Americans agreed and they didn't really appreciate it. So if the people who we're honoring don't like it, well, what the fuck are we actually doing here?

 

I'm climbing down from my soapbox now.

 

Anyway Progressive Field has this really cool feature: behind the batter's eye in center field is a gigantic wall full of plaques of former Cleveland players. It's their Hall of Fame. Guys, I have to be honest, I enjoyed it more than the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. Any player that you can think of who called Cleveland home will be on that wall and it was cool to go through and remember some guys.

 

The cool thing about Progressive Field is that it's much cozier than the Mistake by the Lake aka Cleveland Municipal Stadium which was also the home of the Browns and could seat 74,438 people. If every seat was filled for an entire season, that would mean a yearly attendance of 6,029,478 people. The highest season attendance in MLB is the Colorado Rockies during their inaugural season of 4,483,350.

 

No one is ever going to hit six million, especially in Cleveland.

 

This is an instance where smaller is better and players don't feel like they're playing in the Grand Canyon. Go to comfy Progressive Field and feel the warmth of a cozy little bandbox. You'll love it.

 

Here's the box score of the game we saw: https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2009/B08210CLE2009.htm Both of these teams were kinda butt, Seattle was mediocre at best and Cleveland had just sold off/traded all of their players from their last run and were in the midst of a rebuild. There were no current Hall of Famers, but the Mariners had ICHIRO! and he's going to sail into Cooperstown next year.

And he should. He fucking rules.